__/ [ Jim Richardson ] on Thursday 18 May 2006 22:41 \__
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> On Thu, 18 May 2006 10:16:17 -0500,
> flatfish+++ <flatfish@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 May 2006 03:39:10 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>> AmaroK is an audio player for KDE
>>>
>>> http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php/What's_New_in_1.4
>>
>> I just don't get that program at all.
>> Maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong POV, but the interface is awful and
>> while the program is a Swiss Army knife it's slow, buggy and trying to do
>> simple things is just not easy for me.
>>
>> Example: I like to have music going (mp3's) when doing other *stuff*.
>> With xmms I simply go to my mp3 folder and say Play Directory" and it is
>> done. It takes 2 seconds and I can have 10's of 1000's of mp3s playing in
>> shuffle mode.
>>
>
> go to the music directory in konq, rt click, seelct "open with" and type
> in amarok, or select it from the list. Amarok will start and populate a
> playlist based on everything in that dir that is playable.
> Alternatively, drag the dir to the amarok window.
>
>
>> Amarok brings up all of this album stuff, favorites, and a whole pile of
>> *stuff* I have no use for.
>
> Then don't use that stuff.
>
>> Plus it is slow. It always seems to go off on it's own scanning for new
>> music. I have 2 soundcards and XMMS lets me configure and use them
>> separately.
>
> Turn off scanning in prefs if you don't want it to scan, you can still
> manually add content, or manually scan. On the multiple soundcards
> issue, that's the engine, not Amarok, you can change engines in the
> prefs.
>
>
>> Amarok is using gstreamer and xine (xine refuses to work with
>> Amarok on my system, but works fine as a standalone video player).
>
> amarok can use gstreamer, or arts, or xine, etc, again, it's selectable.
> As an aside, one of the things the KDE team is changing is arts, I look
> forward to that.
>
>> I drag songs to the right pane and sometimes I can hit the play button and
>> they don't do anything, I have to go to the menu to get them to play.
>> I've had the same troubles with Suse 10 as well as PCLinuxOS, but at least
>> it's much more stable under PCLinuxOS.
>>
>
> haven't had that problem myself, I use Amarok on an ontherwise GNOME
> setup, doubt that makes a difference, but it might.
>
>> I'm not knocking the program, I'm just saying that I am missing how to
>> effectively USE the thing?
>> I mean all I want to is play songs.
>>
>> FWIW I don't like itunes either so it's not a Linux thing it's more of an
>> interface thing.
>>
>>
>
> Amarok is different from many other music players. I would prefer a diff
> interface, but as for playing music, it rocks. It handles all the audio
> formats I have, including things like Flac, transparently, does a great
> job of sorting by albums, etc, and the audioscrobbler plugin has
> interoduced me to several bands I may have not noticed otherwise.
Thanks for speaking on behalf of that proud community of AmaroK users. I love
AmaroK in every way and, while it is resource-greedy, the beast can be tamed
and locked in a small cage (tweak to remove bloat).
The reason I write this post is to add a little update. OSDir have just put
up a screenshots tour for AmaroK 1.4:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=643&slide=1